I find listening to these quite painful as I do all music by
the ‘lost generation’ of composers who were ruthlessly murdered
by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Viktor Ullmann is another
such example. The only bright spark in the story of these composers
is, that despite everything, and quite incredibly, their works
survived. They stand as a testament to the uplifting nature
of the art of these people created in almost impossible circumstances,
as well as a reminder of the level of cruelty Man can descend
to. The notes accompanying the disc are centred on Ullmann’s
music being anthroposophical in nature, a reference to the philosophy
of Rudolf Steiner and its connection with Goethe. I don’t pretend
to understand any of that so shall simply give my reaction to
the music as it occurs to me.

These works were composed in Theresienstadt (Terezin), the transit
camp in northern Bohemia in which the Nazis carried out their
cynical attempt to scotch the rumours of death camps that were
circulating. It was designed to hoodwink the world by creating
the illusion of a camp in which the Jews were at liberty, nay
encouraged, to organise cultural pursuits like composing music,
playing in orchestras, writing and performing plays and art
classes and then inviting visiting members of the Red Cross
to witness the relative ‘freedom’ they had there. They carefully
disguised the fact that all these people were then shipped off
to Auschwitz and elsewhere to their deaths, including the entire
cast, almost all of whom died, who performed Brundibár,
the children’s opera by Hans Krása, that was performed 55 times.
140,000 people passed through the camp on their way to their
deaths and over 30,000 died there of hunger and disease. The
blocks of houses still bore block numbers when I visited the
town in the 1970s, a chilling reminder of their previous use.
In spite of all this what struck me with this music was its
freshness and life-affirming nature; in Ullmann’s own words
in Theresienstadt “everything musical is in complete contrast
to the environment”. As the liner-notes then point out “Courage
was needed to embrace this approach, to write sonata movements
with markings “Allegro con brio”, “Vivace” and “Allegro grazioso”
in a place of life-denying discrimination.”

Right from the first notes of Sonata no.5 there is
a gaiety, a dance-like rhythm, a lightness of mood that belies
its origins with sounds of birds. The second movement is more
reflective and serious in nature. The third extremely short
movement returns to gaiety all too briefly, the fourth again
seeing a seriousness return though with light overtones. The
final one has march-like rhythms perhaps alluding to the soldiers
in the background.

There is a clearly discernible influence of Bach in the beginning
of Sonata no.6 while the second movement embodies all
the grace its marking Allegretto grazioso implies.
The Presto again seems to allude to a military presence
that always lurks in the background and from which there is
no escape. Bachian melodies return in the final movement that
rounds the sonata off in brisk fashion. The final sonata on
this disc and the last Ullmann had a chance of writing - he
was sent to Auchwitz together with his three children on 16
October 1944 and murdered 2 days later - has been likened to
a summation of his life and a refutation of the Nazi ideology.
With the final movement subtitled Variations and Fugue about
a Hebrew folk-song he identifies with the majority of fellow
prisoners despite his family having converted to Catholicism
before he was born - a further example of cruel irony. He wrote:
"By no means did we sit weeping on the banks of the waters
of Babylon. Our endeavour with respect to arts was commensurate
with our will to live." This chimes in with Goethe’s maxim:
“Live in the moment, live in eternity” and Ullmann and all his
contemporaries who shared his fate will be remembered through
their magnificent creations.

These sonatas are incredibly powerful works that show what a
fantastically gifted composer Ullmann was and what a loss the
world of music suffered with the curtailing of his life at the
age of 46. They require a pianist with equal power to do them
justice and they certainly get that from Azerbaijani pianist
Lala Isakova whose muscular pianism leaves us with an extremely
satisfying feeling of a composer well served.

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